Saturday, September 02, 2006

Wedding Dresses

Today I went to Miss M.'s wedding. If I'm going to be honest, there are a number of reasons why I wasn't exactly grooving on the prospect of going. Nonetheless, ever one to view everything as a learning experience I went. Here is what I learned:

1. The Church of the Nazarene is not the church for me.

2. The phrase "fear of God" does not belong in a wedding ceremony. (The same goes for "wrath of God", "ire of God", "the terrible vengeance of the Lord shall rain down upon you" as well as the words "fry", "fritter" and "abomination unto the Lord".)

3. A woman can have a "more of me to love" body type and still look beautiful and radiant in her wedding gown. (What is it about happiness that makes people so attractive?)

4. Anyone singing a solo at a wedding needs to be able to carry a tune. I'm all for nepotism, but I'm unbending on this.

5. The walking down the aisle music should not be plodding, and organ should be avoided at all costs.

6. If you're going to have a maid of honor, find one who will not bail out on planning the bridal shower at the last minute due to creative differences (or not "having faith" in the impending marriage).

6a. I am not as nice as the former Miss M. She still invited said maid to the wedding and even used her daughter as flower girl. I would not have invited her or at least seated her at the table with the "backstabbing bitch", "nemesis" and "leper" place cards at the reception. (Though perhaps it giving nemeses and backstabbing bitches the opportunity to talk is not the wisest course of self-protective action. It would be fun to pay the leper to bump into them and watch them contract leprosy, though. Okay, it wouldn't really. With my penchant for self-imposed guilt, I would end up living out my days in misery, because of what I had wrought. Besides, being an instrument of leprosy, even if an indirect one, isn't exactly nice.)

7. If you're going to wear a low cut dress, look into cutlets. If the girls are going to be on display, they might as well be served up on display.

8. Weddings are a good excuse to buy or make a new dress.

9. I really should make more dresses, because the one I made (ok, I cut it out, my mom did the actual sewing) turned out wonderfully! It fit perfectly and was made of happy fabric with jaunty red, yellow, pink, and orange tulips on a white background.

10. It's good to have friends who give you free happy fabric with jaunty red, yellow, pink, and orange tulips on a white background, because if you can find a pattern and zipper on sale, the whole dress only costs $6.

11. If you're attending a wedding out in the greater Nowhere metropolitan area, Big Burger in Mollala is a good place to stop for lunch on the way home. It's no Big Jim's, but will do in a pinch.

12. It would be nice if the vivid wedding dream I had a few months ago were precognitive. I'm not holding my breath, though. My John Wesley Harding and the Magic Bus dream was vivid too and it did not come true, not even the part about the monkey butler.

13. Watching Miss M become Mrs. M made me realize that if my master plan to become a spinster surrounded by 15 cats doesn't pan out, I need to have another plan in place. Some of the points above are a good start.

14 comments:

Jen said...

10. Yay! I am so glad that the happy fabric was put to good use! I am sure the dress you made out of it was prettier than the one I had in mind (back in 19mumblemumble

9. It's true, you should!

8. also true. I think we should incorporate more reasons, though.

7. amen!

2. I still say it sounds like the Church of the Quivering Bretheren

5. my recommendation: Funky Town.

12. It hasn't come true YET. I have faith in the monkey butler.

Jen said...

hee hee. I guess we are opposite twins today, for I have opened a parenthetical comment and not closed it.

)

there. I feel better.

Anonymous said...

Blogiquette is not my forté, which is my excuse for posting off-topic comments to this posting, as well as thoughts from previous postings. I will, however, maintain the local tradition of compiling a list, albeit a random collection.

1. My DVD of Cold Comfort Farm arrived yesterday. It's Dutch. Or rather the cover is in Dutch and subtitles are available in Dutch, but otherwise it's in a language I understand. It will be a while before I get around to watching it though;

2. I thought of another definite entry for the film-as-good-as-the-book list: Rebecca. I don't know why it popped into my head but it was a well before I saw your posting which started "Last night I dreamt..." Actually there are probably other Daphne du Maurier adaptations that would be contenders too, such as The Birds and Don't Look Now, both of which were short stories, I think, but I'm not familiar with them;

2a. The Great Gatsby? Depends on how much you like the film. I did;

3. ) and, indeed, ( ;

4. Pictures of you in your wedding dress? I don't mean your Wedding Dress, I mean your wedding dress. You know what I mean;

5. which is your 6a. The plural of nemesis is nemesiseseese;

6. which is your 5. Some years ago, a bride requested that her walking down the aisle music be "that tune from Robin Hood", meaning Bryan Adams's Everything I Do I Do It For You from Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, that appalling song which was at number one here for months. When she got there, they played the theme tune for the old Robin Hood TV show. Served her bloody well right;

I love a good organ, though it has to be a big one;

7. What prompted you to put that Mark Twain quote in your banner?

Martina said...

JEN:

10. I'm am still pleased with the dress. Someone commented that it was brighter than the things I usually wear. Apparently another up side of gifted fabric is that one ends up with colors and prints that are not part of ones usual palette.

8 & 9. I'm sure we could come up with a number of good reasons to avail ourselves of new clothes, not the least of which being that it actually does feel good to look nice!

2. As I've read more about the Nazarenes, I can believe they are the descendants of the quivering brethren.

5. Point well taken regarding "Funky Town", but only if the reception is held somewhere on "Electric Avenue".

12. Maybe I'm just a softie, but I've not totally given up on the monkey butler either.

Regarding opposite twins: I find it strangely comforting to know that for every lone open parenthesis, there is, somewhere in the blogosphere, a closing mate for it.

Martina said...

Chris:

2. Which film version? I think there might be a few.

2a. I never saw the film, but I love the book. I can't remember if we mentioned it in the other thread, but "To Kill a Mockingbird" is another one where both the film and book are enjoyable.

4. No, there were no pictures taken of me (thankfully, as I am feeling decidedly unphotogenic at the moment and make it my goal avoid the wrong side of a camera lens like the plague)

7. Mostly just that I like it

Anonymous said...

It's the 1995 version of Cold Comfort Farm, with Kate Beckinsale. (I don't know if the 1968 adaptation is on DVD.) IMDb was clearly wrong to say it was "made for TV", as there is a cinema trailer on the DVD. It's just that it was produced by BBC Films but for cinema release before showing it on telly, the same way Channel Four Movies operate.

I have a vague memory of you mentioning To Kill a Mocking Bird somewhere before but it wasn't in the context of good film/good book. The book seems to be rare over here. I've been looking for a copy in charity shops for years, following the recommendation of someone whose literary credentials outrank even your own. There should be no prejudice against her just because she is yellow and eight years old.

Leslita said...

10) I KNEW it was Jen who gave you the fabric! It just HAD to be!

2) Fritter???

7) What are cutlets? I may need to get some! Why don't I know about this?

Anonymous said...

 
The Powellhurst Dictionary of Anatomy defines it thus:

Cutlet (cut-let) n. the little bit of skin between a woman's bra strap and underarm.

The same work also suggests that under certain circumstances people can be "grossed out" by particular cutlets. In that particular instance, nudity was involved, from which we may infer that the presence of a bra is not strictly necessary for a cutlet to exist.

Martina said...

LESLIE:

10) She is like the fabric fairy!

2) It's from Cold Comfort Farm's Church of the Quivering Brethren. If you haven't seen it, the movie is worth watching just for Ian McKellen as Amos Starkadder. (Though it is worth watching for a lot of other things as well.)

7)They are cleavage enhancing bra inserts

Leslita said...

Chris - I'm going with Martina's definition if you don't mind. And I DO need to get me some! :)

Jen said...

Next time you go to lincoln city/gleneden beach, the Maidenform store there has a WIDE VARIETY of cutlets! (boob enbiggening/uplifting variety)

Anonymous said...

My source is attributable. Go to the Archives column on the right of the main page of this blog, select January 2005 and go to the entry at the bottom of the page (which is actually the first chronologically), entitled Alpengack, Sacagawea and 2005. The definition I gave was a direct quote from that, along with a cross-reference in the following post, And still, I live.

Maybe that was a different Martina.

Martina said...

Your source was part of a joke. If there is one job on this earth that is completely unnecessary, it's got to be archivist of the Powellhurst blog. Much of it is not meant to be taken seriously. As a general rule, I would strongly advise against citing anything with "Alpengack" in the title as an authoritative reference. It's not exactly the OED and it's definitely not worth cross-referencing.

To clear up any confusion, they are decidedly not the same type of cutlet. One was a made up term for underarm flab and the other is the legitimate name for a female support garment.

Leslita said...

...which I have GOT to get ahold of!